Технические науки/6. Электротехника и радиоэлектроника

Студентка Левина О.С., ст. преподаватель Горбина М.А.

Южно-Российский государственный университет экономики и сервиса, Россия

New technology in electronics – Kinect technology

Electronics is a field of engineering and applied physics dealing with the design and application of electronic circuits. The operation of circuits depends on the flow of electrons for generations, transmission, reception and storage of information.

Today it is difficult to imagine our life without electronics. It surrounds us everywhere. Electronic devices are widely used in scientific research and industrial designing, they control the work of plants and power stations and help people discover new phenomena of nature.

We live in the word of modern technologies. There are lots of them beginning with the medicine technologies and equipment to the household technology. Today new technology in electronics – Kinect technology.

The Kinect is designed for use with Microsoft's Xbox gaming console. The Xbox is a remarkable living room entertainment system.

Let’s take a closer look at all the parts.

Figure 1-6. Kinect external component identification— Output: A) IR (infrared) structured-light laser projector, B) LED indicator, and K) motor to control tilt-in base. Input: F-I) Four microphones, C-D) two cameras (RGB and IR), and E) one accelerometer.

There are two basic ideas when working with hardware, and with technology in general, that are really important: input and output. Input is information that comes into a system from an external source, and output is information that goes out from a system. The Kinect has sensors that act as inputs, reading (or sampling) information in space about the physical environment in front of it. The Kinect also has actuators (outputs) that allow it to write or act upon the physical space by changing it in different ways. There are four microphones on the Kinect. That’s not just stereo; it’s actually quadraphonic sound.

Combined with advanced digital signal processing in software, these four mics can be used to do remarkable things. In combination, these four audio inputs can work to filter out background noise and detect the relative position of anyone speaking within a room. Looking at the Kinect head on, there are three adjacent mics on the right side, just below the “XBOX 360” label (Figure 1-6, G-I). A fourth microphone is on the left side (Figure 1-6, F).

The Kinect kind of looks like a huge, clunky old webcam, which is fitting because there’s actually a standard webcam built right into the middle of it (Figure 1-6, C). Next to it is an infrared camera, which is a bit more exotic than a standard webcam. Equally interesting, if not downright mysterious, is the 3-axis accelerometer inside the device, behind the “XBOX 360” label. Most people didn’t expect the Kinect to contain such a sensor, which is more common in devices designed to be held in your hand, such as a mobile phone.

Now, for the outputs. The Kinect has a laser in it. You can see it glowing red (Figure 1-6, A) when the Kinect is plugged in. It works in combination with the infrared camera on the unit (Figure 1-6, D) to derive the exact position in space of everything in the room it occupies. The other light-based output is the LED indicator (Figure 1-6, B).

The Kinect for Windows sensor expands the possibilities for innovation with features like Near Mode, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the sensor. In addition, up to 4 Kinect sensors can now be plugged into the same computer.

Kinect was invented in 2005 by Zeev Zalevsky, Alexander Shpunt, Aviad Maizels and Javier Garcia. Kinect itself was first announced on June 1, 2009 at E3 2009 under the code name "Project Natal"

Following in Microsoft's tradition of using cities as code names. "Project Natal" was named after the Brazilian city of Natal as a tribute to the country by Brazilian-born Microsoft director Alex Kipman, who incubated the project. The name Natal was also chosen because the word natal means "of or relating to birth", reflecting Microsoft's view of the project as "the birth of the next generation of home entertainment".

Numerous developers are researching possible applications of Kinect that go beyond the system's intended purpose of playing games. For example, Philipp Robbel of MIT combined Kinect with the iRobot Create to map a room in 3D and have the robot respond to human gestures, while an MIT Media Lab team is working on a JavaScript extension for Google Chrome called depth JS that allows users to control the browser with hand gestures. Other programmers, including the Robot Locomotion Group at MIT, are using the drivers to develop a motion-controller user interface similar to the one envisioned in the film Minority Report. The developers of MRPT have integrated open source drivers into their libraries and provided examples of live 3D rendering and basic 3D visual SLAM. Another team has shown an application that allows Kinect users to play a virtual piano by tapping their fingers on an empty desk. Oliver Kreylos, a researcher at University of California, Davis, adopted the technology to improve live 3-dimensional videoconferencing, which NASA has shown interest in.

In the future we can say that Kinect has changed the way people play games and experience entertainment. Now Kinect for Windows offers the potential to transform how people interact with computers and Windows-embedded devices in multiple industries, including education, healthcare, retail, transportation, and beyond.

The release of the Kinect for Windows sensor and software development kit (SDK) for commercial applications opens up the limitless possibilities offered by Kinect technology. Together, the hardware and software offer a superior development platform for Windows and a higher quality, better performing experience for end users.

To further incite innovation, the Kinect for Windows hardware will be available through a variety of resellers and distributors in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, and the United Kingdom.